Pro Advice for Maximizing Your Power

Max Testa helps BMC racer Steve Morabito set up his trainer after the sixth stage of the 2013 Tour de France. (Matt Allyn)

For the past 25 years, Dr. Max Testa has helped some of the world’s top cyclists improve their health and training. He began working with the 7-Eleven team and now serves as BMC Racing’s chief medical officer, coaching athletes like Tejay van Garderen. For nearly his entire career, Testa has focused on helping riders eke out every extra watt. Bicycling caught up with the doctor at the Tour de France to talk power, and to discuss how his workouts can help recreational cyclists boost their strength. He offered these eight tips.

Start in Your Middle
Before his riders even enter the off-season, Testa starts them on a core-strength program to prepare for the next year. In his research, Testa found that riders with a weak core are less efficient late in a workout or race, and can lose as much as five percent of their power compared with a rider who has a stronger core.

Extend Your Back
As appealing as a six-pack stomach might seem, Testa stresses that cyclists need to prioritize their back muscles during core-training sessions. The back is one of two major stabilizers, along with the hips, and especially comes into play when a rider stands to climb. Two of his favorite back-strength moves are the classic plank and the superman. To perform the latter, lie on your stomach and then lift and hold your arms and legs off the ground.

Train Eccentric Motion
The eccentric contraction of muscles, like lowering a weight, is often overlooked but contributes to a cyclist’s overall strength. Testa has and old-school recommendation: Ride a fixed-gear bike several times a week during the off-season. It works because slowing a fixie requires riders to push back against the pedals—an eccentric muscle contraction.

Strengthen and Stabilize
When his BMC riders are not racing in a Grand Tour, Testa has them complete two to four circuits of 10 to 12 exercises to increase their strength and stability. The workouts include free-weight exercises as well as moves borrowed from yoga and Pilates. Unlike strength machines—which work muscles only in one dimension—raising a dumbbell, for instance, calls smaller support muscles into action for greater gains, he says.

Lift Smart to Save Your Spine
Testa does have one exception to his free-weights rule. He tells riders to use machines for lower-body exercises because cyclists’ lower bodies are usually much stronger than their upper bodies—their backs might not be able to support the weight their legs can lift during a squat. So in place of squats, he recommends leg presses, leg curls, and leg extensions.

Mix in Jumping
After every three exercises in his strength circuit, Testa has riders jump rope for a minute. The exercise keeps an athlete’s heart rate elevated, and each landing from a hop triggers an eccentric contraction. Plus, the light pounding stimulates bone-density growth.
Spin Slowly for All-Day Strength
For cyclists targeting endurance events like a century or fondo, Testa recommends grinding up climbs at 50 to 55 RPMs during a portion of your ride. BMC racers might spin slowly for an hour during a long ride, but you can start with a 20-minute interval. The low RPMs engage more muscles, Testa says, because there is little momentum to help carry your foot around.

Sprint for Big Power
Most cyclists will never be in a Tour de France sprint, but we all can benefit by boosting our maximum power. One way to do that is by short, all-out efforts. Testa recommends performing 20-second sprints, as many as 10 times. The key, he says, it to take a full recovery—two to three minutes—after each effort.

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